A TIME OF HOPE AND PROMISE
Around the world, Jewish people seek forgiveness and repentance st Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur
Five years ago Steve Finkelman was in a car accident a few weeks before Yom Kippur began.
The 57-year-old remembers using crutches to walk up to the front of Beth Yeshurun, the synagogue he’s attended all his life, to read the Torah with his wife. They were asked to offer a blessing of thanksgiving, which is recited in the Jewish tradition after a person escapes a dangerous situation.
“I could’ve been hit differently and not walked away like I did,” he said of the accident. “Sometimes you take for granted that you’ll be there, even the following year.”
As the high holy days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur begin tonight at sun down, Finkelman will keep that perspective in mind.
Each holiday still gives him a renewed sentiment to forgive and grow closer to God. The holidays celebrated by Jewish folk all over the world focus on forgiveness and repentance. It is a time of hope and promise for the upcoming Jewish New Year, which begins with Rosh Hashanah.
Rabbi Oren Hayon, who leads Congregation Emanu El, a synagogue near Rice University which serves about 2,000 families, described the high holidays as the holiest and most important days of the year.
“It’s a time of real deep selfreflection to think about the things you’ve done wrong over the past year,” Hayon said. “And make the inward resolve to how you want to change in the year ahead. We’re all encouraged to make amends with people that we’ve hurt and forgive people who have taken initiative to apologize to us.”
He describes Rosh Hashanah as a time of hope and promise for Jews. The holiday is followed ten days later by Yom Kippur, which focuses on repentance and forgiveness from yourself, with others and with God. Many people spend all of Yom Kippur — the day of atonement — at their synagogues, fasting and praying through-
out.
“They come here in the morning and stay here all day,” Rabbi Brian Strauss said of his congregation at Beth Yeshurun in southwest Houston. “We’ll have 1,000 people who will be here all day long. You’re not eating, you’re not drinking and you’re not really supposed to shower.”
Strauss said the forgiveness aspect of the high holidays is an important part. He said it’s common for people to try to repair relationships with estranged family members, former business partners and others who have made a strong impact on their lives.
“The tradition says we can seek forgiveness from someone if we go up to them at least three times,” Strauss said. “If they don’t accept our forgiveness after a third time, then it’s on them.”
Both rabbis stress how forgiving someone else is hard, but they still encourage their congregation to go through the process.
“The one thing I’ve learned is the refusal to forgive winds up hurting us way more than it does the person who’s apology we refuse to accept,” Hayon said. “In the end, that stubbornness, that resistance to forgive is a very corrosive experience. It wears away at our spiritual reserves and zaps our ability to be generous, gracious and kind.”
Finkelman also agrees that seeking forgiveness with others is often harder then asking repentance from God. During the high holidays, he focuses on looking at himself and how he can be the best version of himself.
“So much of our life is spent on a merry go round, spinning around,” Finkelman said. “And it’s just one of those times where we step aside and devote some time to thinking about the path that you’re on. It’s always about self-improvement in each area. Perfection only exists in heaven.”
Although this is an extremely busy time of year for Hayon, and other rabbis across the country, he makes sure to reserve time for some of his own selfreflection during the holi- days.
“It’s always an invitation to spend some quiet time reflecting about whether I am at a place I want to be with my family,” Hayon said. “Whether I’ve reached out and tried to mend bridges that needed mending over the past year. Whether I’ve been generous enough, whether I’ve been kind enough, whether I’m being the man I want to be as a rabbi, as a community leader, as a son, a brother, a dad.”
Finkelman also said the high holidays is a time when he is able to spend more time with his extended family because they usually eat meals together throughout the days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
“My father was the only one from his family to survive [the Holocaust],” Finkelman said. “So to be able to watch over the years as our family grew, it’s a very powerful type of experience.”
Rabbi Hayon said the increasing digital age has made people more distant from each other but the high holidays allow them to get away from the distractions. He hopes all Jewish people take advantage of the high holidays to do just that.
“I think people give up quickly these days on each other and on relationships,” Hayon said. “Yom Kippur is a time that urges us to be comfortable in discomfort, to think about how we are not who we want to be, how we messed up, and what we broke that we need to fix.”